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Tuesday’s Quick Hits: Ford vs Kavanaugh

When President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, was derailed the Democrats cried foul and said how unfair it was. Now that President Donald Trump’s nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is possibly being derailed, the Republicans are crying foul and saying it is unfair.

Welcome to politics in 2017-18. It’s a dirty business. I must admit the only thing better than watching a bunch of rich people beat each other up in Congress, is watching a bunch of rich people beat each other up on the football field on Sundays.

Surely the Republicans must have thought that the Democrats would use whatever they could to stop a Trump nominee. The Trump nominee had to be super clean. I know, don’t call you Shirley.

The Democrats found something on Brett Kavanaugh – from his high school days a mere 36 years ago – that could bring down the nomination. The Democrats waited until the 11th hour to spring it – those dirty rascals.

Full disclosure – I don’t remember my high school days, and I am around the same age as Kavanaugh. It was all kind of a fog. I still believe the movie “Dazed and Confused” was about my life.

According to the Washington Post, Christine Blasey Ford alleges that at a party during their high school years, Kavanaugh pushed her into a bedroom along with his friend Mark Judge, attempted to remove her clothes and put his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream. Judge denied the allegation in an interview with The Weekly Standard on Friday.

Kavanaugh also denies the allegations.

Now Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh will appear in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. It’s going to be political theater like none other. I imagine the broadcast networks will interrupt their regular schedule to cover the spectacle.

It will be something that Ford has probably never experienced.

All that needs to happen is for Ford to come across as credible and to hold her own against the GOP members of the committee. If so, Kavanaugh is probably done. If the Republicans can discredit her story at all or show that she has partisan reasons for defeating Kavanaugh, he still has a chance. The Republican members need to be careful during their questioning of Ford.

As for Kavanaugh, he needs to keep on strongly denying the allegations. There’s talk that he says he was not even at the party and that she has some motive to see him fail. We’ll see how that plays out.

If the Kavanaugh nomination fails, it will be hard for Trump and the Senate Republicans to push through another nominee before the mid-term election. That means the importance of winning the majority in the Senate gets kicked up a notch.

The Republicans would not try to push through a nomination after the people speak at the voting booth and before the new senators take office in January, would they?

Of course, they would.

Between now and Monday, watch for the jockeying from both sides. We may have a pretty good feeling what the outcome will be before we even get to Monday.

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